Um, one of my ribs is out of alignment.

General Questions
#1

I’ve been losing weight, and am becoming aquainted with my rib cage.

I noticed that one of my ribs on the left sticks out a little more than the others, but I had myself convinced that it was symmetrical, and figured that it was just due to the curvature of my ribcage.

About a month ago, my husband noticed the funny sticky-out rib, too, and I told him that it was the same on the right side. He palapted both regions throughly, and remained skeptical.

Since then I’ve dropped about another five pounds, and I was looking at myself in the mirror, and damned if you can’t see it from the outside! If I stand with my arms over my head and suck in, my normal ribs cast faint, more or less parallel shadows that run all the way around from the back to the front—and then there’s this freak rib that sticks out more at the front and creates a larger shadow And I can really feel it now. It’s very close to the lower rib margin, and I think it’s in the cartilage. It seems thicker at that point than the other ribs, but if I follow it around to my side, it seems normal.

So what the hell is this? Just an anatomical anomaly? Did I unknowingly break a rib in the past and have it heal funny on me? I can’t recall any falls in, say, the last 10 years or so, but in my younger days I certainly took plenty of spills off bikes and so forth. I don’t remember any extraordinary pain, though.

I had a chest x-ray a couple of years ago when I had a bad cold and the doctor never said, “By the way, one of your ribs is completely f’d up.”

#2

You may have dislocated a rib at one time, and it didn’t realign when it healed. I dislocated one while leaning over to get something out of the car’s back seat. It hurt when I breathed for a few weeks, and my doc prescribed a rib splint (sort of a big elastic thing with a Velcro closure.) He said this injury is pretty common, and some people get them by sneezing hard.

Basically, the front end of my rib came loose from the cartilege around the sternum (breastbone.)

If anyone notices it when you’re strolling the beach in your itsy bitsy bikini, you can say you felt something shift when you were belting out the chorus of You’ve Gotta Have Heart. :wink:

#3

My right side sticks out a bit, I don’t worry about it.

#4

Thanks, AskNott, that sounds like a pretty fair hypothesis. When I had the aforementioned Bad Cold, it developed into bronchitis, and I was coughing so hard that it hurt to breathe for about a week, there. Maybe it threw it out of whack then. I’ve been poking at my thorax and squinting at anatomical drawings all morning, and it really does seem to be at the point where the bone and cartilage meet.

I’ll ask my doctor about it when I go in for my next exam, but other than that I’ll try not to worry about it.

#5

My lowest rib on the right side sticks out a bit too, after a mean tackle by a linebacker followed up by yet another linebacker. I broke the thing, and it seems to have healed a bit dislocated. What can you do?

#6

There was a movie about this phenomenon. It was called Alien. (!)

#7

Mine happened at the bottom of the first hill of the “Cyclone” coaster at Coney Island. When it happened I couldn’t breathe and broke out in a drenching cold sweat, and almost lost consciousness (plus the fact that I was on a roller coaster!). I really thought I was dying.

It took several months to stop hurting every time I breathed, and yeah, it sticks out a little. But nothing in my body is symmetrical anyway, so I don’t worry about it.

#8

Yeah, and the horror when you felt the sneeze building up! – Man, that hurt! :smiley:

#9

That happened to me once. It always used to make decisions based on personal friendships and love of freedom and peace when it was trying to play a Lawful Evil Rogue.

#10

:confused:

#11

That’s a long way to go for a D&D joke.

#12

It’s always a long way to go for a D&D joke.